A Splash of Crimson
by CrimsonObsession
Summary: [SLASH] ToddKurt. A Halloween-inspired fic, AU. Todd runs into a mysterious figure in an alley...


11/7/03  
  
Author's Notes: I started writing this for this week's challenge at the community Igiebay and I run [shameless self promotion] http://livejournal.com/community/toddkurtslash/ [/shameless self promotion] but the challenge time limit was 80 minutes and this took me two full nights XD. The option for our Halloween challenge that I picked was the vampire one, because I'm a total vampire freak and it was inevitable. I had another idea for a vampire fic set in Evo*verse, but this little AU thing ate my brain. Enjoy!  
  
Disclaimer: Closest-thing-to-bishounen-America's-got Kurt and the lovely and amazing Toad-Boy belong to Marvel, the WB, and probably bunches of other wonderful peoples. So do anyone else mentioned herein. I don't own them, I'm just a klepto who intends no harm and will return them when I'm done. Please dun hurt me.  
  
SLASH DISCLAIMER: This...is...SLASH. Ever seen Boy Meets Boy? That's what this is, only in this case it's Elf meets Toad. If the thought of boys loving boys (and kissing boys and touching boys etc. etc.) makes you make little sicky noises, you probably want to go somewhere else.   
  
----  
  
'A Splash of Crimson'  
  
Blood makes a particular sound when it strikes wet stone. It's a peculiar one, somewhere between the light splash of a drop of dew and the squishing, pungent sound of rotting fruit squeezed in a fist. It's filling his ears now, with his own panting breath, and he sags against the alley wall as the the cold of the cobblestones stings his hands and spreads through the worn fabric covering his knees.  
  
It's a nightly routine for the boy. Finish cleaning the inn, serve up the last of the drinks before closing down the bar for the night. Do his best to shoo the straggling, half-asleep-with-drink customers out the door. Take the trash to the back, where he's waiting, cruel grin scarring his face and eyes that brook no argument. The whole ordeal ending with the boy in the alleyway outside, a few sticky coins in his clenched fist and a pain in his ass, sometimes (tonight) a trail of blood rolling down his cheek, over his lips, creeping down his thigh like violating fingers.   
  
He shifts his weight, fighting back a scream of pain that threatens to crack his already brittle throat, and lifts his hand to glance at the smudged bits of copper nestled in his grip. Working his fingers to the bone in the inn only buys his squalid hole of a room under the stairs. This isn't the first time, and it certainly won't be the last. After all, a boy's got to eat.   
  
A scowl crosses his features, briefly, and is replaced by a dead stare, accompanied by a shuddering sigh. The noise breaks the silence - but it wasn't just him. There was another sound, an undercurrent running below it, imperceptible to the ears. Almost as if he could feel it on the wind, rather than hear...   
  
The air turns chill, and suddenly the dingy alley he's spent the better part of a year in has become something new, something that sets his nerves on edge and the delicate fuzz at the nape of his neck standing up. Rumors begin to run through his mind, whispered talk of demons and monsters that've been roaming the countryside for months, killing livestock. His heart pounds, his head darts around, eyes scouring the ebony shadows for hints of movement, colors that don't belong. He tries to stand, ends up squealing in pain and falling back against the stone wall. Stagnant water seeps through his pants.  
  
"Who's there, yo?" he demands, only it's not a demand so much as a plea, but he can't bring himself to care.   
  
"Why do you do it?"  
  
The voice comes out of nowhere, and the boy jumps, eliciting still more pain. Breath hissing through his teeth, he gasps out, "What? Listen man, I don't want no trouble. Go ahead and take the cash, it's not like I can't get more, really..."  
  
"Cash?" the disembodied voice chuckles, the sound echoing through the cramped alley and rolling off the stone walls. It's a soothing voice, calm and soft, velvet with a heavy but pleasant accent; but the laugh is bittersweet, tinged with something dark, and the boy's anything but reassured. His eyes are still darting about, searching for the seeemingly absent body to match the voice that comes from everywhere at once.  
  
"Man look, I ain't got nothing you'd want, okay? Unless you're after sloppy seconds, why don't we just go our merry, -separate- ways and let this be done with. Huh?"  
  
"Cash isn't exactly high on my list of needs," the unseen voice purrs, and suddenly there's a body to go with it, a shadowy figure silohuetted at the end of the alley. It's lean, male, and short, maybe a few inches taller than he is. A long coat trails to just below his calves, and his features are indistinguishable in the dark. "As for what I want, well..."   
  
The boy can't see his face, but the shadow's head moves slightly, and he feels eyes boring into him, running over him in a way that sends a shiver up his spine. Still too hurt to move and throat too dry to speak, all he can do is squirm, and mouth a quick prayer to a God he thought he stopped believing in long ago.  
  
"You never answered my question."  
  
The boy stares at him, eyebrow cocked. Surprise drags the word, "Question?" from his cracked lips. He licks them, and blood taints the back of his throat.  
  
"Yeah, question. You didn't tell me your name yet, either, but I assumed you just hadn't gotten around to it." The voice reflects a smile the figure's hidden features don't reveal. He crouches down suddenly, until their heads are even. "So why do you do it?"  
  
The boy scowls, momentarily forgetting his fear. "Do what, yo? And I ain't in a habit of blabbing my name to mysterious people who like to hang around in alleys and scare the shit out of other people."  
  
"So you'll do...what you did with that man," the boy gets the distinct impression the shadow's wrinkling his nose in disgust, "without protest, yet you won't tell me your name? Way to make a guy feel welcome."  
  
"I'm not out to make you feel -welcome-! For all I know you're wandering alleys at night cause you're looking for people to kill, why the fuck would I want to 'make you feel welcome'?" And he's reminded himself of just what kind of situation he's in...fear creeps back into the boy's gut, and he starts to scrabble slowly across the wall, ignoring the debris littering the ground and training a fear-filled eye on the other end of the alley.  
  
The figure makes no move to stop him; merely turns his head away, facing the wall as he clasps his hands together on his knees. When he speaks again, it's wounded and soft. "I won't hurt you, really. I just...wanted to talk. ...It's been so long."  
  
The street is only a few good jumps away. The boy glances between freedom and the figure; it's close, so close, surely he could hit the open road before the shadow could reach him, maybe even before he realized what had happened. Maybe if he could distract him...  
  
"You're so eager to leave?" the voice asks, emotionless, and the boy curses under his breath, licks his lips again and tries not to stare at his one vain shot at freedom.   
  
"Yeah, well. I've got places to go, you know? People to see, trash to clean up, you get the idea." He scoots another few inches to the alley's exit, a bolder move than he thought himself capable of.   
  
The shadow's head bows. "Ah," he whispers, and something in his voice stills the boy for a moment. And he speaks again, "Am I really that frightening?" and the boy's survival instincts falter with his scrabbling fingers. He wonders why he's not running down the street by now, or lying on the freezing cobblestones with his life leaking from him in slow drops.   
  
Then he thinks that maybe one has something to do with the other.   
  
"Um...Well, man, mysterious guys who hang out in alleys and hide their faces tend to be a little scary, yeah."   
  
The figure laughs, a bitter barking sound that somehow doesn't fit, like mucking a floor with fine silk. "And if I showed my face, then you wouldn't be scared, ja? Surely, for what could be scary about little old me." A sigh floats through the air between them, forced out by weary lungs. The figure stands...and steps into the dim light seeping in from the street beyond.   
  
Sharply pointed ears - skin the color of a full moon midnight, coal and water - feet shaped like a cat's, hands shaped like nothing the boy's ever seen; he gasps, mouth moving but his throat closing on the scream that wants to tear from it. The figure, demon, whatever it is, grimaces at his reaction, gently parting lips revealing two tiny, perfect fangs, somehow gleaming pearlescent in the nearly non-existent light. The boy wills his legs to move, his throat to unclench. He manages to make it to his hands and knees, takes a few stumbling, crawling steps.   
  
"Please! Please, I mean you no harm, really!" the demon cries, a hurt, frightened sound, and the boy freezes with his fingers a mere hands-breadth from the street. Glancing over his shoulder, he regards the demon, who's cringing in the shadows again. And curses himself for a fool, for what he's about to do. Finally struggling to his feet, he crosses the alley again, back into the chill darkness, and comes to rest standing over the now-crouching figure.  
  
"Todd."  
  
Pale gold glints for a moment, blinks. "Vas?"  
  
"Those freaky ears not hear so well? The name's Todd." He reaches a hand down. The more realistic part of his brain expects it to be bitten at any moment. And he realizes the other part almost hopes it will be, and is afraid. Warm, strange fingers settle on Todd's, and he starts; what he took for skin is actually fur, silken under his touch. He shivers, but won't let himself pull away.   
  
"Nightcrawler," the demon says, voice as soft as his fur, while he uses the proffered hand to pull himself to his feet.  
  
"Nightcrawler? What kinda name is that, yo?" 'Just your typical demon-esque one', Todd's mind remarks. He tells his mind to stuff it.  
  
"It's a perfectly good name!" The demon boy (for he is a boy, Todd can tell now, young and thin and soft, with a face that hovers somewhere between handsome and pretty) crosses his arms indignantly, his lower lip jutting in the barest hint of a pout. Todd cocks an eyebrow at him. "It was given to me by my...peers. Carries all kinds of honor and meaning. It's a great name."   
  
A smirk joins Todd's skeptical eyebrow. 'Nightcrawler' throws up his arms and rolls his eyes. "Oh for the love of...Kurt, all right? Call me Kurt, if you must." He turns his back on Todd, stalks across the alley a ways. Todd follows, previous fear lost in the depths of a natural curiousity; but those pale eyes turn to him again, glancing back over a black-clad shoulder, and he's struck with a feeling of entrapment.   
  
"So you answered my second question, Todd," he states quietly. "But what about my first?" His voice doesn't travel far, sputters out somewhere just past Todd's ears, downed by the blanketing silence falling over the alley. The world constricts.   
  
"Why do I do what, man?" Todd tries to shrug the question off, knowing what little good it will do. "A guy needs money to live. Not many other ways to get it, right?" He makes a feeble dismissive gesture, hand waving at his shoulder, and contemplates how stupid he sounds. "What about you? What are you, anyway, and what're you doing here? And do I really want to know the answers?"  
  
The demon (Kurt, his name is Kurt, demons don't have normal names like 'Kurt') smiles, and the look in his eyes makes Todd's heart clench. "As for one and three, something much older than you, and probably not. As for what I'm doing here..." Suddenly he's close, far too close, breath sweet and heavy on Todd's face, smelling of mint and the barest tang of copper. Todd steps back, without thought, only to find his wrist in an unexpectedly strong grip. He looks down to find a thin, fuzzy cord and what's that spade-shaped thing twitching?...It's a tail. There's a tail around his wrist. He stares at it, dumbly, as the demon continues. "What I'm doing is...what you want me to be doing." Those lips lean closer as the words are spoken, warm breath breezing over Todd's earlobe, and he shudders and gasps.  
  
"What're you..."  
  
"You're sick of it, aren't you? Of being a victim? Of knowing no one cares?" His smooth voice firms for a moment, before dropping to the consistency of fine talc, or flour. "You called me here. Your pain called me. Your...blood." Warm wetness trails slowly along Todd's sensitive neck, and his eyelids flutter, closed, opened, closed again.   
  
"You want this...don't you? But it's lonely, so damn lonely. You've got to know that."  
  
"Oh please." Todd chokes on his own flippant tone, on the skepticism. "H-hard to have less than no one. Couldn't be any fucking worse than this." A question tickles at the back of his mind, and he grasps for it through the haze slowly filling in his senses. "Want what?"  
  
The boy's tongue laps gently at Todd's neck again, and he moans, squirming back against the wall. The warmth doesn't leave his skin; a hot sigh presses into it instead, heating him with a dangerous fire that wars with the ice of fear writhing in his gut. He tries to move, pushing feebly against a grip infinitely out of proportion to the demon's size. "He-hey," he chokes out around his own too-thick tongue. "Hey...wait a...a minute, yo..." Each word brings that slick wetness against his shoulder and neck, brings soft breath to stir the fine hairs on his pale skin and weaken his knees. His hands are brought together, pressed wrist to wrist and bound by a soft, furry tail. A whimper crawls out of his throat, dives off his dry lips and crashes on the cobblestones.  
  
Through the haze the demon finally strikes. Pain lances up Todd's shoulder as his skin is pierced, and he throws his head back with a shocked cry, voice breaking, and pulls feebly against the living bond at his wrists. As he fights he fades, strength and consciousness ebbing from him in slow, agonizingly slow waves. The weak struggling only makes the demon (Kurt, right? Yeah. Kurt.) bite harder. Todd could almost swear those perfect fangs are growing every second they're buried in his flesh. His world shrinks to a ball, small and filled with pain and pleasure, the sounds of sucking lips and lapping tongue and his own panting, coughing breaths. Tears tickle down his cheeks, kiss his lips with a touch of salt, and he tries to figure out why he's crying. The cramped, tiny world is fading now, filling his vision with black, his ears with cotton fluff.  
  
Todd's head strikes the ground, and it's a moment before he realizes the pain is gone from his neck, as are the fangs. He forces his eyes open, squints through lowered eyelids at the blurred shadow standing over him. A muffled voice reaches him through a mile of mist, ('Come find me.')...and the world is black, and warm, and dead.  
  
___  
  
Tif/CrimsonObsession 


End file.
